But there are other beings in Constantinople who arouse a far more
profound sentiment of pity than the dogs. The eunuchs, who were first
introduced among the Turks in spite of the clear and unmistakable voice
of the Koran, which denounced this infamous form of degradation in no
measured terms, continue to exist in defiance of recent legislation
prohibiting the inhuman traffic, since stronger than either law or
religion are the abominable thirst for gold which induces the crime
and the cowardly egotism which derives advantage from it. These
unfortunates are to be met at every street-corner, just as they are
encountered on every page of history. In the background of every
historical scene in Turkey may be traced one of these sinister forms
grasping the threads of a conspiracy, laden with gold, or stained with
blood--victim, favorite, or instrument of vengeance; if not openly
formidable, secretly so; standing like a spectre in the shadow of the
throne or blocking the approach to some mysterious doorway. And the
same way in Constantinople: in the midst of a crowded bazâr, among the
throng of pleasure-seekers at the Sweet Waters, beneath the columns of
the mosques, beside the carriages, on the steamboats, in käiks, at all
the festivals, wherever people are assembled together, one sees these
phantoms of men, these melancholy countenances, like a dark shadow
thrown across every aspect of gay Oriental life. With the decline of
the absolutism of the Sultan their political power has waned, just
as the relaxing of Oriental jealousy has diminished their importance
in private life; the advantages they once enjoyed have consequently
become greatly reduced, and it is only with considerable difficulty
that they are now able to acquire sufficient wealth or power to in any
measure compensate them for their misfortune. No Ghaznefér Aghà would
now be forthcoming to submit voluntarily to mutilation in order to
become chief of the white eunuchs; all those of the present day are
unwilling victims, and victims who receive no adequate compensation.
Bought or stolen as children in Abyssinia or Syria, about one in every
three survives the infamous knife, to be sold in defiance of the law,
and with a pretence of secresy far more revolting than if it were
done openly. There is no need to have them pointed out: any one can
recognize them at a glance. They are usually tall, fat, and flabby,
with smooth, colorless faces, short waists, and long legs and arms.
They wear fezzes, long black coats, and European trousers, and carry
a whip made of hippopotamus skin, their badge of office, walking with
long strides, and softly like big children. When on duty they accompany
their mistresses on foot or horseback, sometimes preceding, sometimes
following after, the carriage, either singly or in pairs, and looking
around them with an ever-watchful eye, which, at the slightest
suggestion of disrespect either by look or gesture on the part of a
passer-by, becomes so full of angry menace as to send a cold chill
down one’s backbone; but, except in some such case as this, they have
either no expression at all or else an utter weariness of everything
in the world. I cannot recollect ever having seen one of them laugh.
Some among them, while very young, look fifty years old, and others,
again, give one the impression of youths who have suddenly, in the
course of a few hours, grown into old men; many of them, sleek, soft,
and well-rounded, look like carefully-fattened animals. They wear fine
clothing, and are as scrupulously neat and redolent of perfume as some
vain young girl. There are men so heartless as to laugh in the faces
of these unhappy creatures as they pass them on the street; possibly
they imagine that, having been accustomed to it from infancy, they
are unconscious or nearly so of the gulf which divides them from the
rest of the human family. But it is perfectly well known that this is
not the case; and, indeed, who, after giving the subject a moment’s
thought, could suppose that it was? To belong to neither sex; to be
merely the phantom of a man; to live in the midst of life, and yet
not of it; to feel the billows of human passion surging all about
you and be obliged to remain cold, impassive, unmoved, like a reef
in the storm; to have your very thoughts, the natural, promptings
of your whole being, held in check by an iron band that no amount of
virtuous effort on your part will ever avail to bend or break; to
have constantly presented before your eyes a picture of happiness
toward which all around you tends, the centre about which everything
circulates, the illuminating cause of all the conditions of life, and
to know yourself immeasurably far away in the outside darkness, in a
cold immensity of space, like some wandering spirit accursed of God;
and to be, moreover, yourself the guardian of that happiness in which
you can never participate, the actual barrier which the jealousy of man
has reared between his own felicity and the outside world, the bolt
with which he makes fast his door, the cloth he uses to conceal his
treasures; to be obliged to live in the very midst of that sensuous,
perfumed existence of youth and beauty and enjoyment, with shame upon
your brow and fury in your soul, despised, set aside, without name,
without family, without a mother or so much as one tender memory, cut
off from the common ties of nature and humanity,--who could doubt
for one instant that theirs is a life of torment which the mind is
powerless to grasp, like living with a dagger thrust into one’s heart?
And this outrage still continues: these unhappy creatures walk the
streets of a European city, live among men, and, wonderful to relate,
refrain from tearing, biting, stabbing, spitting in the face of that
cowardly humanity which dares to look them in the eye without either
shame or pity, while it busies itself with international associations
for the protection of dogs and cats! Their whole existence is nothing
but a series of tortures: as soon as the women of the harem find that
they are unwilling to connive at their intrigues, they look upon them
as spies and jailers, and hate them accordingly, punishing them by
every device of coquetry that lies in their power until they sometimes
drive them quite beyond all bounds, as in the case of the poor black
eunuch in the _Lettere persiane_, who put his mistress in the bath. The
very names they bear are a bitter irony, being called after flowers
and perfumes, in allusion to the ladies whose guardians they are, as
_possessors of hyacinths, guardians of lilies, custodians of roses and
of violets_. And sometimes, poor wretches! they fall in love and are
jealous and chafe, and become shedders of blood, or, seeing that some
ardent glance directed toward their lady is returned, they lose their
heads altogether and strike, as happened once during the Crimean War,
when a eunuch struck a French officer in the face, and had his own
head cut open in consequence by the other’s sword. Who can tell what
they suffer or how the mere sight of beauty must sometimes torture
them, a caress enrage, a smile torment them, the sound of a kiss given
and returned cause their hands to steal toward the dagger’s hilt? It
is hardly to be wondered at that in their great empty hearts little
flourishes beside the cold passions of hate, revenge, and ambition;
that they grow up embittered, cowardly, envious, and savage; that
they have either the dumb, unreasoning devotion of an animal for
their owners, or else are cunning and treacherous; or that, when they
do get into power, they use it to revenge themselves upon mankind
for the affront put upon them. The more desolate and isolated their
lot, so much the more do they seem to feel a necessity for female
companionship. Unable to be her lover, they seek to be the friend of
woman. They even marry, sometimes choosing for their wives women who
are pregnant, as Sunbullin, Ibrahim’s chief eunuch, did, so as to have
a child to love as his own, or, like the head eunuch of Ahmed II.,
they have harems filled with virgins in order that they may enjoy the
contemplation and society of female loveliness; others adopt young
girls, so that in old age they may have a female breast upon which to
recline and not go down to the grave ignorant of all tenderness and
loving care, having had nothing all their lives but scorn and contempt,
or at best indifference. It is not uncommon for those who have grown
wealthy at court or in some princely establishment, where they have
combined with the duties of chief eunuch those of intendant, to
purchase in old age a pretty villa on the Bosphorus, and there to pass
the remainder of their days in feasting and gayety, seeking by these
means to blot out the recollection of their misfortune.
Among all the various tales and anecdotes which were told me about
these unfortunate beings one stands out with peculiar clearness in
my memory. It was related by a young doctor of Pera in denial of the
statement, sometimes made, that eunuchs do not suffer.
“One evening,” said he, “I was leaving the house of a wealthy
Mussulman, one of whose four wives was ill with heart disease; it
was my third visit, and on coming away, as well as on entering, I
was always preceded by a tall eunuch who called aloud the customary
warning, ‘Women, withdraw,’ in order that the ladies and female slaves
might know that there was a man in the harem and keep out of sight. On
reaching the courtyard the eunuch returned, leaving me to make my way
out alone. On this occasion, just as I was about to open the door, I
felt a light touch on my arm: turning around, I found, standing close
by me, another eunuch, a good-looking youth of eighteen or twenty, who
stood gazing silently at me, his eyes filled with tears. Finding that
he did not speak, I asked him what I could do for him. He hesitated a
moment, and then, clasping my hand convulsively in both of his, he said
in a hoarse voice, in which there was a ring of despair, ‘Doctor, you
know some remedy for every malady; tell me, is there none for mine?’ I
cannot express to you the effect those simple words produced upon me:
I wanted to answer him, but my voice seemed to die away, and finally,
not knowing what to do or say, I pulled the door open and fled. But all
that night and for many days after I kept seeing his face and hearing
those mournful words; and I can tell you that more than once I could
feel the tears rising at the recollection.”
Philanthropists, journalists, ministers, ambassadors, and you,
gentlemen, deputies to the Stambul Parliament and senators of the
Crescent, raise an outcry in God’s name that this hideous ignominy,
this black stain on the honor of mankind, may in the twentieth century
be merely another dreadful memory like the Bulgarian atrocities.